At The Earth's Core!

At The Earth's Core is a delightful romp of pure science fantasy. The classic tale by Edgar Rice Burroughs is well told in this John Dark produced and Kevin Connor directed effort. It follow's the previous year's offering of ERB wonder called Land The End of Time. But where as the previous movie has sought to reap as much reality as it could from the fantastic elements, this one dives head into a rich lush artificiality.

This movie felt like a modern reinvention of one of the classic ground-breaking Melies movies, particularly The Trip to the Moon. The hooplah as David Innes and Dr. Abner Perry strike out into the depths of the planet. There's no fifteen minute waste of getting to know you, it's a blast from the get-go and soon enough they find themselves in Pellucidar, a land where it is always day and man is merely one of the intelligent species seeking to dominate the environment. The momentum doesn't cease and we meet Dia and other Pellucidarians when David and Abner captured and taken to the city of the Mahars, the flying reptiles who seek to control Pellucidar.

Every scene in this movie was shot on a stage giving the whole affair an heightened artificial feeling, one which works for the elevated manner of the storytelling. With monsters created using the Suit-mation techniques I didn't find a thing in this movie that couldn't be recreated or approximated on the stage. This is a movie that never lets forget it's a fiction and that's just fine.

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The People That Time Forgot!

The People that Time Forgot is a sequel to The Land that Time Forgot logically enough, but aside from the setting and the similar titles there's little actual sameness in these flicks based on Edgar Rice Burroughs science fiction novels. There was a rugged sense of reality in the first movie which is replaced by dashing bravado in the second. That's not a criticism but merely an observation about the differences in tone. Once the viewer figures out this is not a movie in the same style as the first one, I think it can be more fully enjoyed on its merits.

Caprona is a complicated place where the very process of evolution is on display, or at least that was the intention of ERB and also of the first movie. This movie couldn't care less about that in any real way, it just wants some monsters and some exceedingly odd and dangerous people to pit against the stalwart heroes. The heroes are folks in search of the protagonists of the first movie having learned of Caprona from the message in a bottle. The expedition  was sent specifically to investigate and rescue and to that end a large bi-plane is used to cross over into the heart of Caprona.

There are dinosaurs and there are cavemen, but they seem to be of less interest to the creators of this movie than a whole other civilization of warriors and such who seem to have been plucked from from a Conan movie knock-off. The imagery of Frank Frazetta seems to have been a big influence on this new culture. Doug McClure, the hero of the previous movie is found but his rescue is less certain. But Patrick Wayne (brash leader) and Sarah Douglas (doughty photographer) are a handsome couple of swashbuckling characters who brave the attempt. They are assisted by a lovely cave girl with awesome cleavage (Dana Gillespie) and a portly professor type (Thorly Walters) just to keep it ERB like. But half way through, this story feels more Robert E. Howard than Edgar Rice Burroughs.

The People that Time Forgot is a light smoothly crafted middle budget adventure flick. Taken on those terms it's good value for the money.

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The Land That Time Forgot!

The Land that Time Forgot is the first of three adaptations of the works of Edgar Rice Burroughs by director and in many ways the most successful. The success is in the relatively serious way in which the film was approached. It has alas, become all too commonplace for irony to invade adaptations of vintage science fiction, so as to distance the adapters from the inherent silliness of the material. That doesn't happen here. This movie is one of four produced by John Dark and directed by Kevin Connor and starring Doug McClure. It pits men against the wildest of natures and forces them to make difficult choices every minute.

A German U-Boat sinks an English ship and the survivors of that ship through an array of coincidental events take control of the U-Boat but end up lost and eventually discover the long lost island of Caprona. They use the submarine to gain entry to the interior of the forbidding island and find a world in which evolution has gone wild. It takes a while and many lives lost to the dangers of dinosaurs, but eventually we learn that on Caprona as nowhere else evolution happens within lifetimes and that individual creatures (including man) will transform over time.

I'm not sure it all makes sense really. Caprona was one of Edgar Rice Burroughs' wildest inventions, but it fashions a fantastic setting for people to struggle against the world and themselves. That happens here too as the two factions (German and English) combine forces to survive and hopefully escape Caprona, but eventually fall victim to the old violent passions. Those that survive will send a message which will result in a sequel. More on that next time.

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Humanoids From The Deep!

How I've been a sci-fi fan and missed this 1980 flick for this long is a mystery. But finally at last I can say I've watched Humanoids from the Deep (great title), a film also known (and this was the title I actually saw) as Monster. There's no denying that this is horror schlock, but by and large it's pretty decent horror schlock.

Hate this poster--probably why I've passed on this flick so long.

The plot's pretty simple. A fishing town named Noyo has fallen on hard times and a new cannery offers up both jobs and controversy as the local Native Americans take issue. The conflict between the Indians and the town folk forms a backdrop to while away the minutes while we watch several deep sea monsters lumber out of the depths and kill and rape and terrorize.

The affable and reliable Doug McClure is on hand as the hero (of sorts) and he's joined by Ann Turkel as the obligatory scientist-who-knows-too-much and Vic Morrow as small town thug and racist. It's a pretty good cast and that helps a lot in a movie which forgets its own plot from time to time.

Doug McClure, Ann Turkel, and Friend

Editing and last-minute changes by producer Roger Corman to get more salacious material (i.e. nudity) into the movie probably account for the continuity glitches which harass this story throughout.  One gap in the storytelling is the utter disappearance of the hero's brother's girlfriend who is killed half way through the movie but is instantly forgotten along with the truck she was driving.

Also the finale is pretty hair-brained, or at least the multitude of extras are. I guess they are following director's orders, but the constant milling back and forth as the monsters kill and ravage seems ludicrous. It takes long minutes for a local celebration to clear while the camera lovingly lingers on one brutal kill after another. Little of the action in this sequence makes a lot of sense, but it does (as intended I'm sure) create some ludicrous scenes such as a monster attacking folks on a carousel which reveals more of the killing on each successive pass.

This ain't necessarily a good movie, but it is at times diverting. There's sure no attempt to keep the monsters off the screen (maybe a mistake at times).

Love this poster.

This one is recommended for what it is, goofy monster fun.

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The Land That Trampus Found!

Above are images from The Land that Time Forgot, a mid-70's adaptation of the Edgar Rice Burroughs classic. It's a story of modern men in the middle of a war who find themselves forced to become allies in a maddening environment rich with prehistoric threats of all sorts.

The movie starred Doug McClure, a charming TV actor who I loved on The Virginian. I liked him so much on this TV show, one my family always seemed to end up watching, that I find it almost impossible to accept in any other role. He does what he's supposed to in this movie, but I always see Trampus.

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Movies That Time Forgot!

What a curious collection of movies these are. I well remember Doug McClure (who I watched as Trampus on The Virginian for years) and how he suddenly became the go-to guy for Burroughs films in the 70's. While I love Tarzan and the Martian and Venus novels are very entertaining, I'll confess the sheer splendor of the notion of Pellucidar might be my fave ERB concept. I got this quartet of flicks on a pair of dvds and watched them that way.

The Land that Time Forgot and its sequel The People that Time Forgot are not set in Pellucidar but Caprona, ERB's beyond bizarre lost world where evolution is recapitulated each generation. It's a strange idea and very difficult to communicate in a flim, though the first movie does a reasonable job at trying. We've got the submarine, the WWI setting, and such before we get to the dinosaurs and cavemen, and frankly they spend perhaps too much time in that set-up, but once there the movie gets running and despite breaks in logic never slows down nor does it offer up a partiuclarly happy ending. The sequel is stranger still as it seems more a Robert E. Howard adventure than an ERB one, though the main influence seems to be Frank Frazetta. There are a number of stunning images (and babes) in this movie, though the story itself is pretty weak. The tale is far less dense and less compelling, though I give the visuals high marks.

At The Earth's Core is a cracking good flick, and never lets up. The red sky of Pellucidar is strange and gives the whole movie a definitely stagey but offbeat feel. The acting is pretty good in this one and the story of one man leading a revolt against the Mahars is pretty well handled. The monsters are unintentionally laughable in places but given the times these were made quite understandable. Peter Cushing is especially good in this one, giving Abner Perry a real crackpot but capable presentation. The War Gods of the Deep has nothing to do with ERB but is spun out of a Poe poem and offers up sea monsters and impossibly aged pirates pitted against a lost world beneath the waves off England. Vincent Price keeps this one out of the fire when he's on screen. He's always so magnificent in his presentations that he elevates even the most lackluster movies. The sets on this one are pretty good, though Tab Hunter is pretty dense for most of the movie. It doesn't make sense all the time, but it does offer up some compelling images here and there.